Month: November 2011

LaHood: GOP More Interested in Defeating Obama than Creating Jobs

Buck Banks

I’ve been in Washington 35 years… and I’ve never seen a time when people have put their own personal political feelings over how we can get the economy moving.

— Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the only Republican in President Obama’s cabinet, telling the Daily Beast that his party “is more committed to defeating the president than creating jobs.”

Economist: Presidents Need to Be Able to Talk and Do

Buck Banks

Not to be overly pedantic, but talking is a kind of doing. Indeed, talking is primarily how one gets things done in politics. How does Mr Perry convey that he is a doer, and not a talker? By talking. What else is there? Interpretative dance? A presidential candidate unable to best a foe in a public exchange, or to communicate his position on a complex issue when the heat is on, is about as useful as a one-legged fullback. There’s a good reason Mr Perry’s embarrassing debate performances have left him trailing Herman Cain by 15 points in the polls not long after he entered the race with a comfortable lead: a candidate this feckless on his feet would be eaten alive by Barack Obama in the general-election debates.

— The Economist, which is not impressed with Rick Perry’s new Iowa ad in which he discounts his failings as a communicator by saying, “I’m a doer, not a talker.”